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I’ve done this a few times in the past, and this year I’m feeling the need to review all I wrote in 2011, and highlight the best posts (at least, by my own measure). Even though my writing in the past year withered to an average of two or three posts a week, I still managed to get some meaningful ideas out there, and I intend to redouble my efforts in 2012. Herewith, my list of favorites from the past year, in order of appearance:

Predictions 2011 The first substantive post of 2011, by my own reckoning last month, I did pretty well.

The Rise of Digital Plumage In which I talk about my concept of instrumenting our digital identities with as much care as we instrument our physical bodies.

The Internet Interest Bubble I’ve been always in the camp of “we’re not in another bubble,” but in this piece, I argue we do have perhaps too much interest in the whole story, at least, too much interest in rather shallow parts of the story.

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My predictions this year will be pretty focused on the Internet Big Five (Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook) but the first two focus on Twitter. Why? Because Twitter is poised to become a critical “free radical” whose presence affects the actions of all the Big Five players. And 2012 will be the year this becomes readily apparent. In short: In 2012, every Big Five Internet company will need to have a clear Twitter strategy. At the moment, not all of them do.

What do I mean when I use the term “free radical”? Well, taken loosely from molecular chemistry and biology, free radicals are particles with open shells or unpaired electrons – they cause change in otherwise stable systems. I take the term with a bit more license, however – to me Twitter is the only Internet service at scale that has yet to ossify into a predictable platform with a massive revenue base to protect. This fact, plus the company’s liberal philosophical bent toward free speech, positions Twitter as something of a shape-shifting arms merchant in the ongoing battle between the Internet Big Five. Believe me, any one of the Five would kill to own Twitter, several of them have tried to buy the company over the past few years. It’s now clear that Twitter’s path is one of independence. To succeed, it must become the Swiss bank of social intent, providing its services in some kind of useful way to each and every one of the Big Five.

2011 has already set the table for how this year is going to play out. In short, Microsoft and Apple embraced Twitter, Google and Facebook rejected it, and Amazon stayed on the sidelines, for the most part.

Last year, Google allowed its search deal with Twitter to expire (not for lack of trying, I am sure), and then rolled out Google+, which is clearly a Twitter competitor (sure, it’s also a Facebook competitor, but let’s keep this post focused, shall we? Google+ replaced Twitter in Google’s search service. Enough said.). Microsoft, on the other hand, was happy to renew its deal. It’ll do more with Twitter in 2012, to be sure.

Last year was the year Facebook pretty much copied everything Twitter does, up to and including the “Subscribe” feature, which is pretty much a full copy of Twitter inside the Facebook walled garden. Meanwhile Apple embraced Twitter wholeheartedly, with a deal that clearly benefited from Facebook negotiations gone south. And as I said earlier, Amazon didn’t see much reason to work with Twitter, save adding a few new handles to its corporate identity.

In 2012, every Big Five player is going to have to reckon (again) with Twitter. And it’s my hope that Twitter’s approach to these Internet behemoths is to force them all to play by the same rules. In other words, no exclusive deals for any of them. If Google wants to integrate Twitter natively into Android (the way Apple has with iOS), why, great. Twitter won’t refuse to do so because Apple objects. Should Microsoft care to build Twitter natively into Xbox Live, again, no problem, but sorry Microsoft, Twitter keeps the right to allow Sony or Nintendo (or, gasp, Facebook proxy Zynga) the same option. When Amazon starts publicly acting like a full-blown media company (and not just a distribution or ecommerce player), it will cut a deal with Twitter for distribution and data, quite possibly in the advertising network space. Amazon’s competitors will have nothing to say about it. And if Facebook ever wakes up and realizes that Twitter might play a part in its strategy in some important way, Twitter will be more than happy to figure out a deal, even if Google objects.

In short, the Internet Big Five need a neutral player they can all draw on for value and features that any one of them can’t (or won’t) do – for any number of reasons. This is the role Google played in the first five years of Web 2.o (but increasingly can’t play due to conflicts with owned and operated properties like YouTube, Android, Google+, Places, etc.). For now, Google and Facebook still think they can out-Twitter Twitter. Microsoft and Apple have already punted on competing directly. I’m predicting 2012 is the year Google and Facebook come around and work with Twitter in some new, significant way, as will Amazon.

This is a pretty risky prediction to make, to be sure. Sitting here in January of 2012, it’s quite easy to argue that the folks at Facebook and Google see absolutely no reason to work with Twitter. But there’s an important reason to work with Twitter that hasn’t become quite evident, yet. And that has to do with the concept of openness and the need for third party validation in the eyes of government and consumer scrutiny. More on that in a future prediction.

2012 is going to be a year of contrasts – of consolidation of power for the Internet Big Five, and fragmentation and disruption of that power due to both startups as well as government and consumer action. I’ve spent the past few weeks jotting down thoughts for 2012, and hope to do the Year That Is About To Be justice in the following set of posts.

Yes, I said “set of posts,” because for the first time since the birth of this blog (that’d be nine years ago), I’m going to post my predictions one by one. Why? Well, because I’d like to dig in a bit on each. If I do it all in one post, we’d have a *very* long read, and most of you are just too busy for that. I don’t plan to release these posts slowly, I’m just going to write till I’m done, so ideally I’ll be done in a few days. And when I’ve finished, I’ll post a summary of them all, for those of you who want all these predictions in one easily linkable place.

So let’s start with Prediction #1: Twitter will become a media company, and the only “free radical of scale” in our Internet ecosystem.

Let me break this into two parts. First, the media company angle. We’ve seen this movie over and over again, with Google and Facebook the most notable “new media companies” of the past decade (and Microsoft the most reluctant). Most engineering-driven Valley companies resist the mantle of “media company,” though Facebook seems to be adapting rapidly to that fact. Its key executives make a point of declaring themselves in the business of selling advertising, and if the new Timeline feature isn’t a play to create the world’s biggest media company at scale, then either A/I’m crazy or B/no one else is paying attention. I doubt the latter is true. The former, well…

Now, Twitter is an engineering-driven company, but its future rests in its ability to harness the attention of its consumers, then resell that attention to marketers. If that sounds crass, I don’t mean it to be. Twitter has a chance to do what Google did – at least initially – provide a platform for advertising that actually adds value to the ecosystem in which it lives. Twitter’s initial platform for ads is pointed generally in that direction – Promoted Tweets only get “resonance” if people engage with them, for example. But it’s about to get more complicated.

Here’s why. When Twitter rolled out its mostly-lauded new design late last year, it added a new section to all of our accounts. Can’t remember what it’s called? You’re probably not alone. Twitter’s new “#Discover” section reputedly addresses what I’ve called the service’s greatest problem and opportunity: How to filter all that Twitter noise into a signal that adds unique value to each individual account.

If Twitter gets #Discover right, it’s created an extraordinary media consumption machine. But so far, #Discover ain’t there yet.

You know what is close to there, when it comes to creating a new kind of media consumption service? Flipboard. And that might make for a few uncomfortable board meetings over at Twitter HP, because Flipboard CEO Mike McCue sits on Twitter’s board. Inevitably, Twitter’s #Discover needs to beat Flipboard at its own game. In the end, Twitter may have to buy McCue’s company (or Mike may have to recuse himself from an awful lot of meetings).

And that’s not the only thing that’s “complicated” about getting #Discover right. As Flipboard has already figured out, once you curate copyrighted material at scale, and then want to sell ads against your curation, things get tricky. This is why Flipboard has spent so much time negotiating rights deals with major publishers. And this will become a major part of Twitter’s work in 2012; work that, to my point, is the work of a media company.

Once Twitter fixes its #Discover problem, an entirely new front opens up for the company in terms of advertising. I find consuming Twitter on Flipboard eerily similar to reading a good magazine, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. And good magazines already have a good advertising model called the full-page ad (and the two-page spread). I predict that Twitter’s rise as a media company (along with the success of Flipboard and various at-scale “magazine-like” apps like Wired and The Daily) will augur a new ad unit we can either swipe past, or engage with. New formats like these need a scale player to really drive them into the minds of ad buyers, and Twitter will be that driver (yes, there’s Zite, and Livestand, Google’s supposedly upcoming Propeller, and and and…but.) This ad format will be a huge hit with marketers, and the subject of many fawning industry press mentions.

My second post will expand on the latter part of my first prediction: Twitter as the only “free radical at scale.” Watch for that later today. And Happy 2012!